Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Shattered Glass Soundwave VS Blaster

I'm not going to pretend that I'm knowledgable about the Shattered Glass universe, or that I'm a fan. To be frank, I'm not a fan. What I do know about the universe is that it's essentially an alternate universe where the Autobots are evil and the Decepticons are the good guys. It's Marvel's "What If?...." series or "Mirror, Mirror" Star Trek. For this reason, I'm not a fan of the figures that have been released and I've never bothered to get any of them.

So if I care nothing for the fiction or the figures, then what's this post about? Why, the Transformers Collector's Club (TFCC) Shattered Glass Soundwave Vs. Blaster set of course! I'm still not really sure why I went ape over this set since I've never cared about Shattered Glass before. More than likely, it was the fact that I'd get more Cassetticons. Man, I love Cassetticons.

The packaging for this set is reminiscent of the older Takara VSE sets.

Front of box

Once you open the front flap of the box, you get this lovely sight.

Inside flap

Inside flap

So far so good. The art on the front is beautiful and it's done by Hidetsugu Yoshioka. I'm not exactly sure who he is, but I believe that he's done quite a bit for Takara. The back of the package features art by Alex Milne, current artist on IDW's More Than Meets the Eye series.

Don't ask me who any of these robots are

As nice as the box is, the figures inside are what I'm interested in. Let's take a look at Soundwave first.

Shattered Glass Soundwave uses the Soundblaster mold which means that he can hold two cassettes at once. I actually really like this color scheme. It looks like he has some sort of arctic camo thing going on. The blues really mesh well with the overall white. Then there's the red Decepticon insignia which is going to take some time to get used to. I'm not sure about the eyes, however.

I wonder if Lo Pan is after him

Soundwave comes with two cassettes, Ratbat and Slugfest. It's nice to get cassettes that aren't Buzzsaw or Laserbeak for a change. Ratbat has always been one of my favorite Cassetticons, so getting another one is great.

I'm...Batman?

From what I've read online, Shattered Glass Ratbat is supposed to be Batman. Yeah. Like I said, I'm not a fan of the fiction. The sets comes with stickers to complete the Batman look, but I've decided not to use them.

Next is Slugfest, and he's Robin, from what I've read. There are decals to add a restraining bolt to his head and one that says "DINOCON".

Soundwave with his minions

On the evil Autobot side, we get Blaster, who's apparently German.

Just as Soundwave used the Soundblaster mold, Blaster uses the Twincast mold, again, this allows for the storage of the two cassettes that are aligned with him. I wasn't too fond of the color choices for this figure at first, but they're growing on me.

Again, the real draw here are the cassettes. It seems like Autobot cassette reuse is very rare so I welcome Autobot cassettes when they come available.

It's great to get another use of the Ramhorn mold. I've always been a big fan of this figure and seeing it used again brings me joy. The color scheme is based on the live-action movie's version of Rumble. The included decals complete this look, but I'm not applying decals.

Next up is Rewind and his deco is based on G2 Rumble. The Rewind/Eject mold is probably my favorite mold. The colors work well, but I'm kind of wondering where the Eject love has gone. Is it Eject's love of sports phrases that turns everyone off? I'm not sure, but I wished he was used more. It's not that I don't like Rewind, as his presence in "More Than Meets The Eye" has been incredible, but I'd like to see more Eject. Still, the fact that this mold got used again is a plus.

Blaster with his minions

The final figure to come with this set is Solarbot. He is perhaps the most obscure reference in all of Transformerdom. Once upon a time during the G2 run of Transformers figures, there was supposed to be an offer for a free figure named Solarbot. This never came to pass and no one even knew what the figure looked like. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and TFCC decided to homage an Eject/Rewind figure with a deco that they figured Solarbot would have looked like.

Again, I love the fact that they've used this mold. I really dig the translucent plastic. According to the comic that came with this set, Solarbot decided to join the heroic Decepticons and as such his heat sensitive rub sign reveals a Decepticon insignia.

While it seems as though the last few reissues have all been Soundwave and Blaster lately, I'm not going to complain as they always come with Cassetticons and Cassetticons are awesome. I'm still not sure what to do with this set, however. I don't have any Shattered Glass figures besides these, so there isn't a dedicated shelf for that. I've been thinking about just simply placing them with their respective molds as I have all of my Communications Officers on one shelf. I've also toyed with the idea of just leaving them in the box until I get some sort of glass display cabinet to keep them in. Soundwave's white deco makes me worry about dust and dirt and potential yellowing. That's actually what I think I'm going to do.

2 comments:

You know, I appreciate what they tried to do with this set: homaging the Japanese VS sets of old, adding in a lot of obscure characters and homages, cool repaints of G1 figures... But like you I am not a fan of the SG Universe so this thing had absolutely zero appeal to me even though I probably should have jumped all over it. I think if it had been anything other than the SG Universe I would have snatched it in a second. It looks like a very nice set though and I'm glad you could add to your cassette armies.